Monday, 31 October 2011

Pizza Night and the squishy dough balls

To celebrate National Pizza Month, we had pizza night at my sister’s house the other day. I brought some of Peter Reinhart’s Country Pizza Dough from the Pizza Quest site and some whole wheat dough. I made the dough balls the day before so all I had to do was take them out of the refrigerator and let them rest in a baking pan while in transit to my sister’s house.

Of course, things don’t always work out the way you plan. On the way to my sister’s house, the dough balls slid on the seat of my car and squished together. I had to reshape them before making the pizzas. At least the pan didn’t slide off the seat. That happened to me on Easter one year when I was transporting an unbaked braided Easter Bread to the family get together. But, that’s another story.

Needless to say, I didn’t take any photos of the dough balls. The dough was sort of a mess when I got to my sister’s house, but I just reshaped the balls and let them rest while the baking stone was preheating. Then I spread out the pizzas on parchment paper and par baked the dough. Everything turned out okay.

My niece and her children were there so I made individual cheese and pepperoni pizzas for the kids. I let the kids top their own pizzas and that turned out to be a big hit. Payton enjoyed posing for the camera with her pizza masterpiece.

She also enjoyed eating her pizza.

Caleb had already finished his pizza, but he didn’t want to miss out on a photo op, so here he is enjoying his dessert.

I made Pizza Margherita for the adults using the Country Pizza Dough. This is the pizza before it was baked. It’s topped with pizza sauce, herbs, mozzarella cheese, and tomatoes and basil from my garden.

Basil shrivels up after it’s baked so the before-baked photo looks better than the after-baked photo, but the pizza tasted really good. I almost didn’t get any it went so fast.

I had some Tartine Whole Wheat dough left from the bread I made for World Bread Day so I decided to bring some for the pizza party. The Tartine Whole Wheat Bread is an artisan-style loaf so I thought it might do well as a pizza dough. The dough didn’t have any olive oil in it so I rubbed olive oil on the top of the dough before I par baked it.

The last pizza of the night was topped with pizza sauce, tomatoes, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, pepperoni, fresh basil and dried herbs.

It was actually pretty good considering the dough was a whole wheat bread dough and not a pizza dough per se. I could taste the whole wheat flavor but it wasn’t overpowering. I thought the flavors blended together really well. Everyone else enjoyed it as well.

Thanks for joining me in the bread baking blog. I hope you enjoyed my pizza party. I love pizza so this was a good opportunity to enjoy some. Not that I need an excuse.